Or just ignore IE8 and assume the "revenue loss" from anyone running that browser not being able to navigate your site is worth the loss of headache.
I always wonder why it is an assumption IE support is mandatory. As others in this thread have pointed out, Chrome / FF now have a combined 700 million and I'd assume between 50 - 70% of the browser marketshare. At some point, using backwards broken nonsense to support outdated browsers becomes a financially unfriendly situation, especially when you can't reproduce a lot of the newer goodness (like html5 localstorage or websockets) in older versions of IE.
> I always wonder why it is an assumption IE support is mandatory.
Because for many, the use of IE is mandatory.
Depending on what service we're talking about, a lot of the IE traffic is going to come from people who work at companies that require the use of their approved/installed software. Every time there's a post about IE there are few people who come out of the woodwork to comment about how they only use Windows + IE at work, and then Firefox/Chrome at home, even on Hacker News of all places. It's easy to forget on here that Windows still has the dominant market share, and for many people who currently use IE (for even part of the day), switching or upgrading is out of the question.
If you don't support IE, you're not encouraging these people to switch - you're encouraging them not to use your service at all.
Depending on the service, it may be that they shouldn't use it while at work in the first place. But that's an aside, there's a simple technical solution. Every time there's a post about IE, and every time someone thinks (or believes themselves to be an example that) there's a single person on the planet who has to live with IE >= 6 when they don't want to, someone in the thread mentions Chrome Frame.
Depending on the service, it may be that they shouldn't use it while at work in the first place.
Sure. But if you run an online store it doesn't exactly benefit you to tell people when they should shop with you and when they shouldn't. Supporting IE may well mean higher sales.
> Chrome / FF now have a combined 700 million and I'd assume between 50 - 70% of the browser marketshare
They have 55% and IE has 35%, but it's much worse than that in a lot of English-speaking countries (like the USA, where IE has 43%). Additionally, older (read: richer) demographics are more likely to use IE than average. So are workplaces (read: corporate customers). IE support being mandatory isn't an "assumption" it's basically a fact. If you're writing for the public web, you probably have to support IE8, and if you're selling things or have corporate customers, it gets even more important.
I always wonder why it is an assumption IE support is mandatory. As others in this thread have pointed out, Chrome / FF now have a combined 700 million and I'd assume between 50 - 70% of the browser marketshare. At some point, using backwards broken nonsense to support outdated browsers becomes a financially unfriendly situation, especially when you can't reproduce a lot of the newer goodness (like html5 localstorage or websockets) in older versions of IE.